A tougher regime for the PRCA?

The Public Relations and Consultants Association has been widely
praised for its decisive action against Bell Pottinger. Since its move, the
trade body has taken on at least a dozen new members keen to show their
commitment to enforcing ethics within the industry.

But let’s not forget that this story had been brewing in the
South Africa media for more than a year. The opposition party Democratic
Alliance had been trying unsuccessfully to interest international media in the
Gupta scandal when in desperation, after some research, it happened upon the
industry’s trade bodies, and made an official complaint in July – three months
after Bell Pottinger had resigned the account.

The PRCA immediately sprang into action, and announced it
would investigate the complaint. Former Bell Pottinger chief executive James
Henderson countered with the agency’s own independent investigation, firing
account lead Victoria Geoghegan and suspending partner Nick Lambert and
associates David Bass and Philip Peck.

Had the Democratic Alliance not complained, would the PRCA
have censured Bell Pottinger? I think that unlikely. While director general
Francis Ingham has amended the body’s prevailing rules to allow the PRCA to
investigate incidents where it believes a member is transgressing its Codes of
Conduct, it has yet to use this power. It had certainly not considered probing
Bell Pottinger’s work in South Africa, believing – like the British media –
that this was a South African story with few local ramifications.

Perhaps the PRCA should up the ante. If its members – as
they seem to indicate – are keen to promote an ethical image, and feel sure
there are no nasty gremlins lurking under their bonnets, why can’t they be
subject to random checks? As they pay their annual fees, each member should
agree that the PRCA can – without warning – turn up to conduct an audit of
their work over the course of that year. Obviously, only a handful of
investigations could be carried out each year, but perhaps the threat that ‘It
could be you’ would be enough to make members think twice before acting.